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Search for a Method
From one of the 20th century’s most profound philosophers and writers, comes a thought provoking essay that seeks to reconcile Marxism with existentialism. Exploring the complicated relationship the two philosophical schools of thought have with one another, Sartre supposes that the two are in fact compatible and complimentary towards one another, with poignant analysis and reasoning.
An important work of modern philosophy, Search for a Method has a major influence on the current perceptions of existentialism and Marxism.
“This is the most important philosophical work by Sartre to be translated since Being and Nothingness. ”—James Collings, America
An important work of modern philosophy, Search for a Method has a major influence on the current perceptions of existentialism and Marxism.
“This is the most important philosophical work by Sartre to be translated since Being and Nothingness. ”—James Collings, America
224 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1960
About the author
Jean-Paul Sartre
833 books11.3k followersJean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre, normally known simply as Jean-Paul Sartre, was a French existentialist philosopher and pioneer, dramatist and screenwriter, novelist and critic. He was a leading figure in 20th century French philosophy.
He declined the award of the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his work which, rich in ideas and filled with the spirit of freedom and the quest for truth, has exerted a far-reaching influence on our age."
In the years around the time of his death, however, existentialism declined in French philosophy and was overtaken by structuralism, represented by Levi-Strauss and, one of Sartre's detractors, Michel Foucault.
He declined the award of the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his work which, rich in ideas and filled with the spirit of freedom and the quest for truth, has exerted a far-reaching influence on our age."
In the years around the time of his death, however, existentialism declined in French philosophy and was overtaken by structuralism, represented by Levi-Strauss and, one of Sartre's detractors, Michel Foucault.
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September 25, 2011
What was Existential Marxism? 9/20/2011
Most people are aware that Western Marxism (Lukács, Gramsci, et al.) and the so-called 'Frankfurt School' (Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse, e.g.) significantly differ from the 'theories' and policies that emanated from the 'all-knowing' seers in the Soviet Union and Red China. But most people do not remember Existential Marxism; while those who do regard it merely as a type of Western Marxism. But that is not entirely correct. (Nor is it entirely wrong; after all, the best short definition of 'Western Marxism' is that it is the Marxism that takes philosophy seriously.) Sartre and Merleau-Ponty were often quite critical of both the USSR and and also some aspects of Western Marxism (Lukács, e.g.) in their various 'Marxist' works.
So, what is Existential Marxism? It is an open-ended philosophy that rejects both the 'utopianism' of the classless society (understood as some final state of human history, i.e., a 'final totalization') and at the same time rejects, avant la lettre, the nihilism of postmodernism. Sartre says, "if such a thing as a Truth can exist in anthropology, it must be a truth that has become, and it must make itself a totalization." He understands that "such a totalization is perpetually in process as History and historical Truth." No totalization, no state of affairs, is permanent; this means that both the dogmas of diamat and the marxisant superstitions regarding some utopian future are categorically rejected.
Dialectics is either a practical explanation of contemporary circumstances or it will be frozen in some totalization that eventually no longer applies. This last, both fortunately and unfortunately, has always turned out to be the history of really existing Marxism.
This book, "Search for a Method", in its first incarnation appeared as an essay that Sartre wrote for a Polish review on the situation of Existentialism in France. Later, it was reworked substantially for his famous journal "Les Temps Modernes" and the article was renamed "Existentialism and Marxism". This book is the latter unchanged. Sartre tells us that there is one question he is posing:
"Do we have the means to constitute a structural, historical anthropology?"
Well, yes, we have Marxism, and (according to Sartre) within Marxism we have a "philosophy of freedom" (i.e., existentialism) as a sort of loyal opposition. Now, why doesn't existentialism (in this review I will only be interested in the existentialism of Sartre) just join Marxism? After all, Marxism is, according to Sartre, the 'philosophy of our time'. Why Existentialism? Because "Marxism stopped." It had ceased to be willing to learn. This is why existentialism had to rise and attempt to correct it. Not that Marxism and existentialism are merely opposites. Sartre points out that the founders of these two movements (i.e., Kierkegaard and Marx) both oppose to Hegel "the incommensurability of the real and knowledge." For Kierkegaard the 'real' is the individual subject; for Marx, it is social relations. But how did these two seemingly separate critiques come together in Existential Marxism? For Sartre personally, it "was the war which shattered the worn structures of our thought." Abstractly, the students of his generation had been groping their way towards Marxism and the working class. "We had repudiated pluralist realism only to have found it again among the fascists, and we discovered the world."
So, why not simply become Marxists? Again, because "Marxism stopped." What does that mean? That "there arose within it a veritable schism which rejected theory on the one side and praxis on the other." This was due to the situation of the USSR and the absence of a successful European Socialist Revolution. The USSR had to 'go it alone' as a socialist state, and today we know even better than Sartre that this was simply impossible. "The separation of theory and practice resulted in transforming the latter into an empiricism without principles; the former into a pure fixed knowledge. On the other hand, the economic planning imposed by a bureaucracy unwilling to recognize its mistakes became thereby a violence done to reality." The problem is that neither the Party, nor its theoreticians, could ever change their minds. "And I do not mean to speak only of Communists, but of all the others - fellow travelers, Trotskyites, and Trotsky sympathizers..." Sartre, after mentioning the revolt in Hungary, concludes this line of thought by saying that later, "there was news, a great deal of news; but I have not heard it said that even one Marxist changed his opinion." So we end up with ideal types, 'Soviet bureaucracy' and 'direct Democracy', each the negation of the other. They have become caricatures, ...and articles of faith.
But Marx does not do this. He always strives to appreciate "the process as a unique totality." He studies each event within history and political economy with both the ability and the willingness to learn from them. "In the work of Marx we never find entities. Totalities [...] are living; they furnish their own definitions within the framework of the research." In Marx, everything in the human social world is dialectically moving. This is why each historical situation must be analyzed in its own unique terms, which "is but the first moment in an effort at synthetic reconstruction." But,
"Marxist voluntarism, which likes to speak of analysis, has reduced this operation to a simple ceremony. There is no longer any question of studying facts within the general perspective of Marxism so as to enrich our understanding and to clarify action. Analysis consists solely in getting rid of detail, in forcing the signification of certain events, in denaturing facts or even in inventing a nature for them in order to discover it later underneath them, as their substance, as unchangeable, FETISHized 'synthetic notions.' The open concepts of Marxism have closed in. They are no longer keys, interpretive schemata; they are posited for themselves as an already totalized knowledge. To use Kantian terms - Marxism makes out of these particularized, FETISHized types, constitutive concepts of experience. The real content of these typical concepts is always past knowledge; but today's Marxist makes of it an eternal knowledge. His sole concern, at the moment of analysis, will be to 'place' these entities. The more he is convinced that they represent truth a priori, the less fussy he will be about truth."
Marxism became a Dogma. This means, above all, that past (i.e., temporary) knowledge has been reified into Eternal Knowledge by our Marxist savants. Before any analysis had began, this Marxism (that Sartre here criticizes) always 'knew' the result. It had become an atheistic faith with infallible texts and equally certain infallible methods. "The totalizing investigation has given way to a Scholasticism of the totality. The heuristic principle - 'to search for the whole in the parts' - has become the TERRORist practice of 'liquidating the particularity'."
Now, what does Sartre think Marxism should do? It should make use of 'bourgeois concepts' without ceasing to criticize them. "The real attainments of American Sociology cannot hide its theoretic uncertainty. Psychoanalysis, after a spectacular beginning, has stood still. It knows a great many details, but it lacks any firm foundation. Marxism possesses theoretical bases, it embraces all human activity; but it no longer knows anything. Its concepts are dictates; its goal is no longer to increase what it knows but to be itself constituted a priori as an absolute knowledge."
But isn't any alliance between Marxism and Existentialism but a pipe-dream? Don't the existentialists claim that each person is an unknowable unsurpassable individual? Perhaps some existentialists think like that; not Sartre (or, for that matter, Merleau-Ponty). While "Marxism has reabsorbed man into the idea, [...] existentialism seeks him everywhere where he is, at his work, in his home, in the street. We certainly do not claim -as Kierkegaard did- that this real man is unknowable. We say only that he is not known."
Regarding 'really-existing' Marxism Sartre says that "its shadow has obscured history; this is because it has ceased to live with history and because it attempts, through a bureaucratic conservatism, to reduce change to identity." A long footnote hanging off this last remark concludes by saying, "They construct an interpretation which serves as a skeleton key to everything - out of three ingredients: errors, the local-reaction-which-profits-from-popular-discontent [sic] and the exploitation-of-this-situation-by-world-imperialism [sic]. This interpretation can be applied as well or as badly to all insurrections, including the disturbances in Vendée or at Lyon in 1793, by merely putting 'aristocracy' in place of imperialism. In short, nothing new has happened. That is what had to be demonstrated." Again, 'really-existing' Marxism no longer believes that it has anything to learn.
For Sartre, Marxism could come to know Man; but today, "it is precisely the conflict between revolutionary action and the Scholastic justification of this action which prevents Communist man -in socialist countries as in bourgeois countries- from achieving any clear self-consciousness." Marxism was once "the most radical attempt to clarify the historical process in its totality." But "for the last twenty years, on the contrary, its shadow has obscured history..." Is Marxism now dying of 'old age'? No. According to our author, "[f]ar from being exhausted, Marxism is still very young, almost in its infancy; it has scarcely begun to develop. It remains therefore the philosophy of our time. We cannot go beyond it because we have not gone beyond the circumstances which engendered it." So long as these circumstances are with us (i.e., the Capitalist System) Marxism will be the 'philosophy of our time'.
But some might ask, doesn't the permanence of Capital, the 'permanence' of capitalist relations, prove either its 'truth' or, at the very least, its terrible necessity? Again, according to our author, no:
"For us, truth is something which becomes, it has and will have become. It is a totalization which is forever being totalized. Particular facts do not signify anything; they are neither true nor false so long as they are not related, through the mediation of various partial totalities, to the totalization in process." The facts of capitalist success, however impressive, do not prove its permanence. In fact, given the never-ending unfolding of a material dialectic, one suspects that there should be no permanence in human history. (Although there can, of course, be stability that endures for a surprisingly long while.)
After quoting Engels famous letter to Bernstein regarding 'economic determinism' Sartre says that "we do not conceive of economic conditions as the simple, static structure of an unchangeable society; it is the contradictions within them which form the driving force of history." For Sartre, nothing said above should be taken to mean he opposes Marxism. Far from it:
"To be more explicit, we support unreservedly that formulation in Capital by which Marx means to define his 'materialism': 'The mode of production of material life generally dominates the development of social, political, and intellectual life.' We cannot conceive of this conditioning in any form except that of a dialectical movement (contradictions, surpassing, totalizations)."
But when does the philosophy of freedom rise that Sartre believes will replace Marxism? "As soon as there will exist for everyone a margin of real freedom beyond the production of life, Marxism will have lived out its span; a philosophy of freedom will take its place. But we have no means, no intellectual instrument, no concrete experience which allows us to conceive of this freedom or of this philosophy." The process of human history is ceaseless. Everything in it is (however slowly) on its way to becoming something else.
I want to stop here. In the 'Annexe' to his "Critique of Dialectical Reason" Sartre said of the relation between this slim volume before us and the thousand plus pages of his 'Critique' that he feared "that this mountain of notes might seem to have brought forth a mouse..." This note of mine has been merely a review of the first chapter of this 'mouse'. I only wanted to show here that Marxism did not need to be only a dogma imposed upon the world through force. I also wanted to indicate that it was possible to be a Marxist and yet still be willing to learn from the world and the various 'bourgeois' (i.e., non-Marxist) disciplines that study our troubled world. At some point I would like to scale the 'mountain' (i.e., the "Critique of Dialectical Reason") with a much (much!) longer review...
But in closing, I again want to point out again that Marxism, for our author, is the philosophy of today; Sartre adds that tomorrow there will be a philosophy of freedom. Now, will that be the end of our dialectical adventures? No, of course not. The deepest problem (in my opinion) is that nature itself is fundamentally non-dialectical. It indeed changes, but it does not 'learn'. It has no Logos. Excluded from Reason forever, material nature can never dialectically grow. Yes, yes, of course nature can change, even evolve; but again, even this 'evolution' teaches it nothing. Thus the dialectical dance of human culture and inhuman nature must be ceaseless and therefore the 'philosophy of freedom' that, according to Sartre, will one day supplant Marxism will also eventually be overthrown. Why? - Because between the rationalizing artifacts of human culture (whether these be things or ideas or social relations) and the bottomless silence of nature there will (and indeed there must) always be contradictions. Thus every Totalization in human history is (and can only be) but a temporary state of affairs...
Sartre is certainly aware of this problem. The question before us is whether our philosophical understanding of Nature (understood ontologically, phenomenologically) and our philosophic understanding of Man (understood dialectically and existentially) can ever be brought together. In the great 'Critique', and this is to his credit, Sartre can be said to be pursuing both these lines of thought. In the Critique, ontologically and phenomenologically, Sartre can be said to be (in some sense) quite nearly a 'cyclical' thinker! Scarcity, the final and fundamental fact of human history, is never really overcome. It returns (in different forms to be sure) to threaten fragile human civilization forever and again. This is part of the reason why there can never be any utopia. But that is only half the story; historically (that is, existentially and dialectically) he is certain that virtually every situation humanity finds itself in can be improved. I too think this way...
Sartre also believes these two great lines of philosophical thought (i.e., the ontological and the dialectical) must somehow come together. In the long footnote that gobbles up the final pages of the first chapter of "Search for a Method" Sartre says that the "only theory of knowledge which can be valid today is one which is founded on that truth of microphysics: the experimenter is part of the experimental system." What does that mean? It means that "the revelation of a situation is effected in and through the praxis which changes it." Of course, according to Sartre, 'official' Marxism (and perhaps even Marx himself!) knows nothing of this:
"Yet the theory of knowledge continues to be the weak point in Marxism. When Marx writes: 'The materialist conception of the world signifies simply the conception of nature as it is without any foreign addition,' he makes himself into an objective observation and claims to contemplate nature as it is absolutely. Having stripped away all subjectivity and having assimilated himself into pure objective truth, he walks in a world of objects inhabited by object-men. By contrast, when Lenin speaks of our consciousness, he writes: 'Consciousness is only the reflection of being, at best an approximately accurate reflection'; and by a single stroke he removes from himself the right to write what he is writing. In both cases it is a matter of suppressing subjectivity: with Marx, we are placed beyond it; with Lenin, on this side of it."
Sartre regards both these understandings as pre-Marxist! He writes his great "Critique", in part, in order to overcome this. He wishes to show that human agency and subjectivity are real parts of our world.
"There are two ways to fall into idealism: The one consists of dissolving the real in subjectivity; the other in denying all real subjectivity in the interests of objectivity. The truth is that subjectivity is neither everything nor nothing; it represents a moment in the objective process (that in which externality is internalized), and this moment is perpetually eliminated only to be perpetually reborn."
Does Sartre overcome existential subjectivism in his 'Critique'? Can he bring phenomenology and dialectics together? Does he limn an epistemology that avoids the traps of subjectivity and objectivity? Of course, each reader must decide for himself. But, before you scale the 'mountain', I suggest that you have a look at Merleau-Ponty's "Adventures of the Dialectic". Here M-P criticizes the pre-'Critique' Sartre for falling back into subjectivism. Sartre's Critique is, in part, an answer to Merleau-Ponty. How successful that answer is would be the subject of another review.
Most people are aware that Western Marxism (Lukács, Gramsci, et al.) and the so-called 'Frankfurt School' (Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse, e.g.) significantly differ from the 'theories' and policies that emanated from the 'all-knowing' seers in the Soviet Union and Red China. But most people do not remember Existential Marxism; while those who do regard it merely as a type of Western Marxism. But that is not entirely correct. (Nor is it entirely wrong; after all, the best short definition of 'Western Marxism' is that it is the Marxism that takes philosophy seriously.) Sartre and Merleau-Ponty were often quite critical of both the USSR and and also some aspects of Western Marxism (Lukács, e.g.) in their various 'Marxist' works.
So, what is Existential Marxism? It is an open-ended philosophy that rejects both the 'utopianism' of the classless society (understood as some final state of human history, i.e., a 'final totalization') and at the same time rejects, avant la lettre, the nihilism of postmodernism. Sartre says, "if such a thing as a Truth can exist in anthropology, it must be a truth that has become, and it must make itself a totalization." He understands that "such a totalization is perpetually in process as History and historical Truth." No totalization, no state of affairs, is permanent; this means that both the dogmas of diamat and the marxisant superstitions regarding some utopian future are categorically rejected.
Dialectics is either a practical explanation of contemporary circumstances or it will be frozen in some totalization that eventually no longer applies. This last, both fortunately and unfortunately, has always turned out to be the history of really existing Marxism.
This book, "Search for a Method", in its first incarnation appeared as an essay that Sartre wrote for a Polish review on the situation of Existentialism in France. Later, it was reworked substantially for his famous journal "Les Temps Modernes" and the article was renamed "Existentialism and Marxism". This book is the latter unchanged. Sartre tells us that there is one question he is posing:
"Do we have the means to constitute a structural, historical anthropology?"
Well, yes, we have Marxism, and (according to Sartre) within Marxism we have a "philosophy of freedom" (i.e., existentialism) as a sort of loyal opposition. Now, why doesn't existentialism (in this review I will only be interested in the existentialism of Sartre) just join Marxism? After all, Marxism is, according to Sartre, the 'philosophy of our time'. Why Existentialism? Because "Marxism stopped." It had ceased to be willing to learn. This is why existentialism had to rise and attempt to correct it. Not that Marxism and existentialism are merely opposites. Sartre points out that the founders of these two movements (i.e., Kierkegaard and Marx) both oppose to Hegel "the incommensurability of the real and knowledge." For Kierkegaard the 'real' is the individual subject; for Marx, it is social relations. But how did these two seemingly separate critiques come together in Existential Marxism? For Sartre personally, it "was the war which shattered the worn structures of our thought." Abstractly, the students of his generation had been groping their way towards Marxism and the working class. "We had repudiated pluralist realism only to have found it again among the fascists, and we discovered the world."
So, why not simply become Marxists? Again, because "Marxism stopped." What does that mean? That "there arose within it a veritable schism which rejected theory on the one side and praxis on the other." This was due to the situation of the USSR and the absence of a successful European Socialist Revolution. The USSR had to 'go it alone' as a socialist state, and today we know even better than Sartre that this was simply impossible. "The separation of theory and practice resulted in transforming the latter into an empiricism without principles; the former into a pure fixed knowledge. On the other hand, the economic planning imposed by a bureaucracy unwilling to recognize its mistakes became thereby a violence done to reality." The problem is that neither the Party, nor its theoreticians, could ever change their minds. "And I do not mean to speak only of Communists, but of all the others - fellow travelers, Trotskyites, and Trotsky sympathizers..." Sartre, after mentioning the revolt in Hungary, concludes this line of thought by saying that later, "there was news, a great deal of news; but I have not heard it said that even one Marxist changed his opinion." So we end up with ideal types, 'Soviet bureaucracy' and 'direct Democracy', each the negation of the other. They have become caricatures, ...and articles of faith.
But Marx does not do this. He always strives to appreciate "the process as a unique totality." He studies each event within history and political economy with both the ability and the willingness to learn from them. "In the work of Marx we never find entities. Totalities [...] are living; they furnish their own definitions within the framework of the research." In Marx, everything in the human social world is dialectically moving. This is why each historical situation must be analyzed in its own unique terms, which "is but the first moment in an effort at synthetic reconstruction." But,
"Marxist voluntarism, which likes to speak of analysis, has reduced this operation to a simple ceremony. There is no longer any question of studying facts within the general perspective of Marxism so as to enrich our understanding and to clarify action. Analysis consists solely in getting rid of detail, in forcing the signification of certain events, in denaturing facts or even in inventing a nature for them in order to discover it later underneath them, as their substance, as unchangeable, FETISHized 'synthetic notions.' The open concepts of Marxism have closed in. They are no longer keys, interpretive schemata; they are posited for themselves as an already totalized knowledge. To use Kantian terms - Marxism makes out of these particularized, FETISHized types, constitutive concepts of experience. The real content of these typical concepts is always past knowledge; but today's Marxist makes of it an eternal knowledge. His sole concern, at the moment of analysis, will be to 'place' these entities. The more he is convinced that they represent truth a priori, the less fussy he will be about truth."
Marxism became a Dogma. This means, above all, that past (i.e., temporary) knowledge has been reified into Eternal Knowledge by our Marxist savants. Before any analysis had began, this Marxism (that Sartre here criticizes) always 'knew' the result. It had become an atheistic faith with infallible texts and equally certain infallible methods. "The totalizing investigation has given way to a Scholasticism of the totality. The heuristic principle - 'to search for the whole in the parts' - has become the TERRORist practice of 'liquidating the particularity'."
Now, what does Sartre think Marxism should do? It should make use of 'bourgeois concepts' without ceasing to criticize them. "The real attainments of American Sociology cannot hide its theoretic uncertainty. Psychoanalysis, after a spectacular beginning, has stood still. It knows a great many details, but it lacks any firm foundation. Marxism possesses theoretical bases, it embraces all human activity; but it no longer knows anything. Its concepts are dictates; its goal is no longer to increase what it knows but to be itself constituted a priori as an absolute knowledge."
But isn't any alliance between Marxism and Existentialism but a pipe-dream? Don't the existentialists claim that each person is an unknowable unsurpassable individual? Perhaps some existentialists think like that; not Sartre (or, for that matter, Merleau-Ponty). While "Marxism has reabsorbed man into the idea, [...] existentialism seeks him everywhere where he is, at his work, in his home, in the street. We certainly do not claim -as Kierkegaard did- that this real man is unknowable. We say only that he is not known."
Regarding 'really-existing' Marxism Sartre says that "its shadow has obscured history; this is because it has ceased to live with history and because it attempts, through a bureaucratic conservatism, to reduce change to identity." A long footnote hanging off this last remark concludes by saying, "They construct an interpretation which serves as a skeleton key to everything - out of three ingredients: errors, the local-reaction-which-profits-from-popular-discontent [sic] and the exploitation-of-this-situation-by-world-imperialism [sic]. This interpretation can be applied as well or as badly to all insurrections, including the disturbances in Vendée or at Lyon in 1793, by merely putting 'aristocracy' in place of imperialism. In short, nothing new has happened. That is what had to be demonstrated." Again, 'really-existing' Marxism no longer believes that it has anything to learn.
For Sartre, Marxism could come to know Man; but today, "it is precisely the conflict between revolutionary action and the Scholastic justification of this action which prevents Communist man -in socialist countries as in bourgeois countries- from achieving any clear self-consciousness." Marxism was once "the most radical attempt to clarify the historical process in its totality." But "for the last twenty years, on the contrary, its shadow has obscured history..." Is Marxism now dying of 'old age'? No. According to our author, "[f]ar from being exhausted, Marxism is still very young, almost in its infancy; it has scarcely begun to develop. It remains therefore the philosophy of our time. We cannot go beyond it because we have not gone beyond the circumstances which engendered it." So long as these circumstances are with us (i.e., the Capitalist System) Marxism will be the 'philosophy of our time'.
But some might ask, doesn't the permanence of Capital, the 'permanence' of capitalist relations, prove either its 'truth' or, at the very least, its terrible necessity? Again, according to our author, no:
"For us, truth is something which becomes, it has and will have become. It is a totalization which is forever being totalized. Particular facts do not signify anything; they are neither true nor false so long as they are not related, through the mediation of various partial totalities, to the totalization in process." The facts of capitalist success, however impressive, do not prove its permanence. In fact, given the never-ending unfolding of a material dialectic, one suspects that there should be no permanence in human history. (Although there can, of course, be stability that endures for a surprisingly long while.)
After quoting Engels famous letter to Bernstein regarding 'economic determinism' Sartre says that "we do not conceive of economic conditions as the simple, static structure of an unchangeable society; it is the contradictions within them which form the driving force of history." For Sartre, nothing said above should be taken to mean he opposes Marxism. Far from it:
"To be more explicit, we support unreservedly that formulation in Capital by which Marx means to define his 'materialism': 'The mode of production of material life generally dominates the development of social, political, and intellectual life.' We cannot conceive of this conditioning in any form except that of a dialectical movement (contradictions, surpassing, totalizations)."
But when does the philosophy of freedom rise that Sartre believes will replace Marxism? "As soon as there will exist for everyone a margin of real freedom beyond the production of life, Marxism will have lived out its span; a philosophy of freedom will take its place. But we have no means, no intellectual instrument, no concrete experience which allows us to conceive of this freedom or of this philosophy." The process of human history is ceaseless. Everything in it is (however slowly) on its way to becoming something else.
I want to stop here. In the 'Annexe' to his "Critique of Dialectical Reason" Sartre said of the relation between this slim volume before us and the thousand plus pages of his 'Critique' that he feared "that this mountain of notes might seem to have brought forth a mouse..." This note of mine has been merely a review of the first chapter of this 'mouse'. I only wanted to show here that Marxism did not need to be only a dogma imposed upon the world through force. I also wanted to indicate that it was possible to be a Marxist and yet still be willing to learn from the world and the various 'bourgeois' (i.e., non-Marxist) disciplines that study our troubled world. At some point I would like to scale the 'mountain' (i.e., the "Critique of Dialectical Reason") with a much (much!) longer review...
But in closing, I again want to point out again that Marxism, for our author, is the philosophy of today; Sartre adds that tomorrow there will be a philosophy of freedom. Now, will that be the end of our dialectical adventures? No, of course not. The deepest problem (in my opinion) is that nature itself is fundamentally non-dialectical. It indeed changes, but it does not 'learn'. It has no Logos. Excluded from Reason forever, material nature can never dialectically grow. Yes, yes, of course nature can change, even evolve; but again, even this 'evolution' teaches it nothing. Thus the dialectical dance of human culture and inhuman nature must be ceaseless and therefore the 'philosophy of freedom' that, according to Sartre, will one day supplant Marxism will also eventually be overthrown. Why? - Because between the rationalizing artifacts of human culture (whether these be things or ideas or social relations) and the bottomless silence of nature there will (and indeed there must) always be contradictions. Thus every Totalization in human history is (and can only be) but a temporary state of affairs...
Sartre is certainly aware of this problem. The question before us is whether our philosophical understanding of Nature (understood ontologically, phenomenologically) and our philosophic understanding of Man (understood dialectically and existentially) can ever be brought together. In the great 'Critique', and this is to his credit, Sartre can be said to be pursuing both these lines of thought. In the Critique, ontologically and phenomenologically, Sartre can be said to be (in some sense) quite nearly a 'cyclical' thinker! Scarcity, the final and fundamental fact of human history, is never really overcome. It returns (in different forms to be sure) to threaten fragile human civilization forever and again. This is part of the reason why there can never be any utopia. But that is only half the story; historically (that is, existentially and dialectically) he is certain that virtually every situation humanity finds itself in can be improved. I too think this way...
Sartre also believes these two great lines of philosophical thought (i.e., the ontological and the dialectical) must somehow come together. In the long footnote that gobbles up the final pages of the first chapter of "Search for a Method" Sartre says that the "only theory of knowledge which can be valid today is one which is founded on that truth of microphysics: the experimenter is part of the experimental system." What does that mean? It means that "the revelation of a situation is effected in and through the praxis which changes it." Of course, according to Sartre, 'official' Marxism (and perhaps even Marx himself!) knows nothing of this:
"Yet the theory of knowledge continues to be the weak point in Marxism. When Marx writes: 'The materialist conception of the world signifies simply the conception of nature as it is without any foreign addition,' he makes himself into an objective observation and claims to contemplate nature as it is absolutely. Having stripped away all subjectivity and having assimilated himself into pure objective truth, he walks in a world of objects inhabited by object-men. By contrast, when Lenin speaks of our consciousness, he writes: 'Consciousness is only the reflection of being, at best an approximately accurate reflection'; and by a single stroke he removes from himself the right to write what he is writing. In both cases it is a matter of suppressing subjectivity: with Marx, we are placed beyond it; with Lenin, on this side of it."
Sartre regards both these understandings as pre-Marxist! He writes his great "Critique", in part, in order to overcome this. He wishes to show that human agency and subjectivity are real parts of our world.
"There are two ways to fall into idealism: The one consists of dissolving the real in subjectivity; the other in denying all real subjectivity in the interests of objectivity. The truth is that subjectivity is neither everything nor nothing; it represents a moment in the objective process (that in which externality is internalized), and this moment is perpetually eliminated only to be perpetually reborn."
Does Sartre overcome existential subjectivism in his 'Critique'? Can he bring phenomenology and dialectics together? Does he limn an epistemology that avoids the traps of subjectivity and objectivity? Of course, each reader must decide for himself. But, before you scale the 'mountain', I suggest that you have a look at Merleau-Ponty's "Adventures of the Dialectic". Here M-P criticizes the pre-'Critique' Sartre for falling back into subjectivism. Sartre's Critique is, in part, an answer to Merleau-Ponty. How successful that answer is would be the subject of another review.
March 3, 2013
Recommendeded to: existentialists from the post-war period dabbling with marxism...
Well, if you don't fit the criterion, I'd recommend reading just the first part, Marxism and Existentialism, and the Conclusion. The middle is mostly about events during the 1789 Revolution, 1848 Revolution, conditions during certain times and how Marxists interpret some events, also Flaubert analyzed both existentially and in a Marxist way.
Basically, Marxism is good but Marxists are bad. They've lost their way in abstractions and lost sight of man, they just deal with abstract ideas and they have a priori solutions to everything. Marx split up with Hegel over the very thing - losing man in a world of Ideas. Existentialism focuses on single existences, just as the original Marx' Marxism does. It has to help Marxism find its way back to that, Sartre says: "Marxism will degenerate into an inhuman anthropology unless it once again includes in itself man as its foundation." (translated by self from non-English translation)
"And that day when Marxian exploration takes the human dimension(that is the existential project) for the foundation of anthropological Knowledge, existentialism will no longer have reason to exist: absorbed, surpassed and preserved in a totalising movement of philosophy, it will stop to be a separate research, to become the foundation to every research."
There you go. I do recommend the first and last bit, though.
Well, if you don't fit the criterion, I'd recommend reading just the first part, Marxism and Existentialism, and the Conclusion. The middle is mostly about events during the 1789 Revolution, 1848 Revolution, conditions during certain times and how Marxists interpret some events, also Flaubert analyzed both existentially and in a Marxist way.
Basically, Marxism is good but Marxists are bad. They've lost their way in abstractions and lost sight of man, they just deal with abstract ideas and they have a priori solutions to everything. Marx split up with Hegel over the very thing - losing man in a world of Ideas. Existentialism focuses on single existences, just as the original Marx' Marxism does. It has to help Marxism find its way back to that, Sartre says: "Marxism will degenerate into an inhuman anthropology unless it once again includes in itself man as its foundation." (translated by self from non-English translation)
"And that day when Marxian exploration takes the human dimension(that is the existential project) for the foundation of anthropological Knowledge, existentialism will no longer have reason to exist: absorbed, surpassed and preserved in a totalising movement of philosophy, it will stop to be a separate research, to become the foundation to every research."
There you go. I do recommend the first and last bit, though.
October 23, 2019
Sartre's half-arsed attempt to make a Marxism which is compatible with Existentialism (and not the other way round). Sartre takes aim at Lukàcs and Stalinism, upholding his vague ideas of a progressive-regressive method which creates a new anthropology of Marxism, which rather than historicising conditions, instead seeks to integrate freedom into them.
For Sartre, the freedom of Marxism is not freedom of the will, but a freedom we move towards through praxis, to create a communist society.
But then one is left with a confused Sartrean Marxism which lacks the historical epochs to understand the forward movement of history. So what are we actually moving towards?
For Sartre, the freedom of Marxism is not freedom of the will, but a freedom we move towards through praxis, to create a communist society.
But then one is left with a confused Sartrean Marxism which lacks the historical epochs to understand the forward movement of history. So what are we actually moving towards?
August 30, 2018
Sartre writes very dialectically and the book is very educational. The footnotes are really enchanting as well.
July 11, 2020
A great short read on the marrying of / contradictions between Marxism and Existentialism, straight from the horse's mouth.
Currently reading
March 2, 2021Although this work came out 3 years before the Critique of Dialectical Reason and was intended to be read after, it can act as a great intro to the Critique. At times, I feel like this book is more conclusions that are brought about rather than arguments necessarily being forged from the ground up like the Critique. This work is very hard without context, and I still do not understand everything. Politcal and socially conscious in nature, this is a arguably the start of Sartre's later thought regarding his existentialism.
I feel like I can't trust anyone, or that I am stuck in an objectified state regarding my history and the current project I am currently in for my work, materialistic projections, etc, despite having a subjective surpassing. But what am I missing? How do we become/manifest freedom under constraints?
"Sartre believes that existentialism and Marxism can go hand-in-hand despite Marxism's materialism and determinism contradicticting the freedom of existentialism. Dialectically, individual facts are meaningless, with truth being found in the interaction of facts rather than facts themselves. The significance of things is within their totality rather than the singluar. Marxism takes situations and makes universals, then imposes said universals on events coming later. Existentialism does not assume a single, real totality, but sees history as an interactive relationship between events and humans. Ideological and social factors guide the course of history, which is only indirectly influenced by economics and class." --Wikipedia
Some quotes that I enjoyed among many others:
"The methodological principle which holds that certitude begins with reflection in no way contradicts the anthropological principle which defines the concrete person by his materiality. For us, reflection is not reduced to the simple immanence of idealist subjectivism, it is a point of departure only if it throws us back immediately among things and men, in the world. The only theory of knowledge which can be valid today is one which is founded on that truth of microphysics: the experimenter is a part of the experimental system. This is the only position which allows us to get rid of all idealist illusion, the only one which shows the real man in the midst of the real world. But this realism necessarily implies a reflective point of departure; that is, the revelation of a situation is effected in and through the praxis which changes it. We do not hold that this first act of becoming conscious of the situation is the originating source of an action; we see in it a necessary moment of the action itself -- the action, in the course of its accomplishment, provides its own clarification. That does not prevent this clarification from appearing in and by means of the attainment of awareness on the part of the agents; and this in turn necessarily implies that one must develop a theory of consciousness. Yet the theory of knowledge continues to be the weak point of Marxism." --Sartre, Search for a Method
"There are two ways to fall into idealism: The one consists of dissolving the real in subjectivity; the other in denying all real subjectivity in the interests of objectivity. The truth is that subjectivity is neither everything nor nothing; it represents a moment in the objective process (that in which externality is internalised), and this moment is perpetually eliminated only to be perpetually reborn. Now, each of these ephemeral moments -- which rise up in the course of human history and which are never either the first or the last -- is lived as a point of departure by the subject of history. 'Class-consciousnes' is not the simple lived contradiction which objectively characterises the class considered, it is that contradiction already surpassed by praxis and thereby preserved and denied all at once. But it is precisely this revealing negativity, this distance within immediate proximity, which simultaneously constitutes what existentialism calls 'consciousness of the object' and 'non-thetic self-consciousness.'" --Sartre, Search for a Method
"But if it is true that 'the population' is an abstract concept so long as we have not defined it by its most fundamental structures (that is, so long as it has not taken its place, as a concept, within the framework of the Marxist interpretation), it is also true that when this framework exists, and for the intellectual who is experienced in the dialectical method, men, their objectifications and their labours, human relations, are finally what is the most concrete. A first approximation painlessly puts them at their proper level and discovers their general determinations. Where we already know the direction and character of a society, the development of its productive forces, and its relations of production, there every new fact (a man, an action, a work) appears as already situated in its generality; progress consists in clarifying the more profound structures by means of the originality of the established fact in order to be able in turn to determine this originality by the fundamental structures. There is a double movement. But today’s Marxists behave as if Marxism did not exist and as if each one of them, in every intellectual act, reinvented it, finding it each time exactly equal to itself. They behave as if the man or the group or the book appeared to them in the form of 'a chaotic representation of the aggregate' (although they know very well that a particular book is by a certain bourgeois author in a certain bourgeois society at a certain moment of its development and that all these qualities have been already established by other Marxists). All this takes place for these theoreticians as if it were absolutely necessary to reduce this so-called abstraction –- the political conduct of a particular individual or his literary work –- to a 'truly' concrete reality (capitalist imperialism, idealism), which in fact is only in itself an abstract determination. Thus the concrete reality of a philosophical work will be idealism; the work represents only a transient mode of it. In itself it is characterised only by deficiency and nothingness; what makes its being is its permanent reducibility to substance – 'idealism'. Thus a perpetual process of fetishising." --Sartre, Search for a Method
I feel like I can't trust anyone, or that I am stuck in an objectified state regarding my history and the current project I am currently in for my work, materialistic projections, etc, despite having a subjective surpassing. But what am I missing? How do we become/manifest freedom under constraints?
"Sartre believes that existentialism and Marxism can go hand-in-hand despite Marxism's materialism and determinism contradicticting the freedom of existentialism. Dialectically, individual facts are meaningless, with truth being found in the interaction of facts rather than facts themselves. The significance of things is within their totality rather than the singluar. Marxism takes situations and makes universals, then imposes said universals on events coming later. Existentialism does not assume a single, real totality, but sees history as an interactive relationship between events and humans. Ideological and social factors guide the course of history, which is only indirectly influenced by economics and class." --Wikipedia
Some quotes that I enjoyed among many others:
"The methodological principle which holds that certitude begins with reflection in no way contradicts the anthropological principle which defines the concrete person by his materiality. For us, reflection is not reduced to the simple immanence of idealist subjectivism, it is a point of departure only if it throws us back immediately among things and men, in the world. The only theory of knowledge which can be valid today is one which is founded on that truth of microphysics: the experimenter is a part of the experimental system. This is the only position which allows us to get rid of all idealist illusion, the only one which shows the real man in the midst of the real world. But this realism necessarily implies a reflective point of departure; that is, the revelation of a situation is effected in and through the praxis which changes it. We do not hold that this first act of becoming conscious of the situation is the originating source of an action; we see in it a necessary moment of the action itself -- the action, in the course of its accomplishment, provides its own clarification. That does not prevent this clarification from appearing in and by means of the attainment of awareness on the part of the agents; and this in turn necessarily implies that one must develop a theory of consciousness. Yet the theory of knowledge continues to be the weak point of Marxism." --Sartre, Search for a Method
"There are two ways to fall into idealism: The one consists of dissolving the real in subjectivity; the other in denying all real subjectivity in the interests of objectivity. The truth is that subjectivity is neither everything nor nothing; it represents a moment in the objective process (that in which externality is internalised), and this moment is perpetually eliminated only to be perpetually reborn. Now, each of these ephemeral moments -- which rise up in the course of human history and which are never either the first or the last -- is lived as a point of departure by the subject of history. 'Class-consciousnes' is not the simple lived contradiction which objectively characterises the class considered, it is that contradiction already surpassed by praxis and thereby preserved and denied all at once. But it is precisely this revealing negativity, this distance within immediate proximity, which simultaneously constitutes what existentialism calls 'consciousness of the object' and 'non-thetic self-consciousness.'" --Sartre, Search for a Method
"But if it is true that 'the population' is an abstract concept so long as we have not defined it by its most fundamental structures (that is, so long as it has not taken its place, as a concept, within the framework of the Marxist interpretation), it is also true that when this framework exists, and for the intellectual who is experienced in the dialectical method, men, their objectifications and their labours, human relations, are finally what is the most concrete. A first approximation painlessly puts them at their proper level and discovers their general determinations. Where we already know the direction and character of a society, the development of its productive forces, and its relations of production, there every new fact (a man, an action, a work) appears as already situated in its generality; progress consists in clarifying the more profound structures by means of the originality of the established fact in order to be able in turn to determine this originality by the fundamental structures. There is a double movement. But today’s Marxists behave as if Marxism did not exist and as if each one of them, in every intellectual act, reinvented it, finding it each time exactly equal to itself. They behave as if the man or the group or the book appeared to them in the form of 'a chaotic representation of the aggregate' (although they know very well that a particular book is by a certain bourgeois author in a certain bourgeois society at a certain moment of its development and that all these qualities have been already established by other Marxists). All this takes place for these theoreticians as if it were absolutely necessary to reduce this so-called abstraction –- the political conduct of a particular individual or his literary work –- to a 'truly' concrete reality (capitalist imperialism, idealism), which in fact is only in itself an abstract determination. Thus the concrete reality of a philosophical work will be idealism; the work represents only a transient mode of it. In itself it is characterised only by deficiency and nothingness; what makes its being is its permanent reducibility to substance – 'idealism'. Thus a perpetual process of fetishising." --Sartre, Search for a Method
March 29, 2023
Læst på dansk: eksistentialisme og marxisme
May 6, 2022
A short, necessary preface to The Family Idiot and essential for anyone interested in the intersection of psychoanalysis and Marxist thought. Here, psychoanalysis is a mediation which can help the Marxist (also armed with the mediation of existentialism) to give full justice to the individual lived life amidst the standard (bad) Marxist move of merely thinking deterministically by reducing the lived existence/experience of humans to an irrational epiphenomenon of general political-economic forces. Here history and historical figures are things that are becoming and the method Sartre attempts to form is a way of viewing the object of analysis in a manner that moves and becomes along with what is analyzed, resisting reification and even fetishization of the object studied.
Here, dialectical materialism is resucitated as a way of continuing the living process of thought, of preventing it from becoming inert, a dead thing, and thereby reflecting life rather than deforming it through the use of ossified, abstract concepts. In dialectical thought "the simple inert juxtaposition of the epoch and the object gives way abruptly to a living conflict." Existentialism is still required as a lens because Marxist thought is a practial Knowledge that cannot yet account for existence.
The "method" brought out is briefly trained on the life and work of Flaubert as a test case. That is why the Family Idiot forms a sort of "sequel" to this volume. He makes a more comprehensive test of the method (across 5 volumes...) on the further elucidation of the case of Flaubert.
I should mention Hazel Barnes writes a clear and cogent intro that is a great refresher on Being and Nothingness and helpfully clues you into how this book relates to the much larger Critique of Dialectical Reason (not to mention fleshing out the personal and political context in which he felt he had to write this). So don't skip it.
Here, dialectical materialism is resucitated as a way of continuing the living process of thought, of preventing it from becoming inert, a dead thing, and thereby reflecting life rather than deforming it through the use of ossified, abstract concepts. In dialectical thought "the simple inert juxtaposition of the epoch and the object gives way abruptly to a living conflict." Existentialism is still required as a lens because Marxist thought is a practial Knowledge that cannot yet account for existence.
The "method" brought out is briefly trained on the life and work of Flaubert as a test case. That is why the Family Idiot forms a sort of "sequel" to this volume. He makes a more comprehensive test of the method (across 5 volumes...) on the further elucidation of the case of Flaubert.
I should mention Hazel Barnes writes a clear and cogent intro that is a great refresher on Being and Nothingness and helpfully clues you into how this book relates to the much larger Critique of Dialectical Reason (not to mention fleshing out the personal and political context in which he felt he had to write this). So don't skip it.
May 1, 2022
Still great.
May 6, 2019
"Search for a Method" seeks a reconciliation of Sartre's Existentialism with Marxism by reasserting the freedom at the core of the process of existence within a system of constraints. One of the most important of these constraints is predictably class. Sartre constructs an alternative to the mechanistic dialectic of many of his contemporary Marxists, which at it's core rejects freedom and flattens historical nuance with pre-determined narratives. They would have you more or less believe that Man is fully determined by his environment and that there is a certain inevitability to the process of history. This inevitability ignores what specific choices specific people made in specific environments. Sartre instead develops his own beautiful dialectic of Man living "through" the constraints into which he is born. Man creates a subjective project, in spite of, but still shaped by his objective surroundings, and in doing so wishes to project his subjectivity into a new objectivity through lived praxis. "Thus the subjective contains within itself the objective, which it denies and which it surpasses towards a new objectivity; and this new objectivity by virtue of objectification externalizes the internality of the project as an objectified subjectivity." (Pg. 98). Sartre's essential goal here is to "restore to the individual man his power to go beyond his situation by means of work and action." (99).
This dialectic of "going beyond" may offer today an essential reassertion of freedom. Sartre's use of the objective environment (principally, the relations of production) as a partially constitutive, but not fully-determining element of existence, is an important bridge between Existentialism and Marxism, reigning in the practical application of some radical freedom at the core of the former. We may still debate whether class and economic relations are the most useful lens to adopt for this analysis, but this limitation on freedom is an important point. The political goal, then, would be the restructuring of the objective environment (society) in a manner that allows the greatest use of freedom for self-actualization. I think this environmental limitation and the dialectic of its "overcoming" is still applicable today as we see certain forms of politics on the Left dissolving agency in societally-determined identity roles. This form of determination is a depressing and unhelpful way to view the world, relegating and flattening lived experience to a predictable pattern that is hopelessly trapped in an un-addressable machine. This is reminiscent of those bad Marxists' flattening of Man within the process of history, though I would argue the contemporary example is worse as it does not even offer a narrative of liberation. Instead, we are frequently told we are a priori determined by identity characteristics that eschew the specific, fixing our destinies within an ironic, defeatist spiral. Today, we should not then forget Sartre's "overcoming" as an essential dialectic that not only rejects environmental determinism, but further allows meaningful individualism within the boundaries of hegemonic societal structures. Sartre does not naively assert freedom, blind to the structural injustices that some individuals face. He actually crucially recognizes these barriers to self-actualization. The injunction is that we should not submit to these barriers in a weak form of determinism, but through our projects, strive to deconstruct them and expand access to the realization of freedom.
This dialectic of "going beyond" may offer today an essential reassertion of freedom. Sartre's use of the objective environment (principally, the relations of production) as a partially constitutive, but not fully-determining element of existence, is an important bridge between Existentialism and Marxism, reigning in the practical application of some radical freedom at the core of the former. We may still debate whether class and economic relations are the most useful lens to adopt for this analysis, but this limitation on freedom is an important point. The political goal, then, would be the restructuring of the objective environment (society) in a manner that allows the greatest use of freedom for self-actualization. I think this environmental limitation and the dialectic of its "overcoming" is still applicable today as we see certain forms of politics on the Left dissolving agency in societally-determined identity roles. This form of determination is a depressing and unhelpful way to view the world, relegating and flattening lived experience to a predictable pattern that is hopelessly trapped in an un-addressable machine. This is reminiscent of those bad Marxists' flattening of Man within the process of history, though I would argue the contemporary example is worse as it does not even offer a narrative of liberation. Instead, we are frequently told we are a priori determined by identity characteristics that eschew the specific, fixing our destinies within an ironic, defeatist spiral. Today, we should not then forget Sartre's "overcoming" as an essential dialectic that not only rejects environmental determinism, but further allows meaningful individualism within the boundaries of hegemonic societal structures. Sartre does not naively assert freedom, blind to the structural injustices that some individuals face. He actually crucially recognizes these barriers to self-actualization. The injunction is that we should not submit to these barriers in a weak form of determinism, but through our projects, strive to deconstruct them and expand access to the realization of freedom.
March 2, 2020
As socialists, it is incredibly important that we hold our own ideas and views up to scrutinty. We must, as Marx once wrote, commit ourselves to the "ruthless criticism of all that exists," including ourselves. This is the task that Sartre takes up in Search for a Method. Sartre aims to show certain deficits in Marxism, and, in doing so, he strengthens the philosophy and provides a way of allowing it to capture more of the human reality that it must if it is to change the world.
I must admit, as fond as I am of the principles of Sartre's existentialism (i.e. "existence precedes essence," "we are radically free," etc.), his writing can get beyond my own underdeveloped abilities. With that said, what I did understand of Search, if I DID understand it at all, is very illuminating. As I say, it manifests as a critique of Marxism, but it is ultimately one that wishes to put the "Marx," as it were, back INTO Marxism the Marx who, as Sartre writes, did NOT "separate being from Knowledge."
The Marxism of Sartre's day was one of mechanistic certainty; it claimed to understand society through its understanding of class relations. To understand one's class position, it seemed to posit, is to understand how one will behave. A member of the bourgeoisie acted as they did BECAUSE they were a member of the bourgeoisie; they were determined by their class to behave in such a manner.
Sartre, in contrast, wants to remind us that, whatever the class position of a human being, they still *remain* a human being and are, therefore, radically free. True, our class position SITUATES us, but it does not DETERMINE us. We have personal histories, psychologies, and memberships in culture(s) that affect how we view our class position, and how we embrace or reject it. Sartre is not saying that class does not matter at all, far from it, but he merely wishes to show that an overreliance on class analysis hides other explanatory factors, and it can blind us to certain truths about the world. Marxism-as-dogma, "Lazy Marxism," as he calls it, is an insufficient tool to understand our society because it posits in advance what the outcomes of a conflict will be, and, like all dogmas, it rejects any piece of evidence that does not fit a pre-established worldview. This is very dangerous as it destroys our ability to interpret the world, to see the material conditions as they are, and, therefore, weakens our ability to effectively change things for the better.
Sartre wants humanity to get beyond necessity. As a Marxist AND an existentialist, he is commited to a project of human freedom. As long as Marxism reduces every individual to their class, however, it undermines its ability to fully grasp a situation and work to end the alienation we all experience living in a society of exploitation. The goal of existentialism, Sartre says, is to be reabsorbed into a completed Marxism that sees humans as situated, but not determined and that understands that we have the power to surpass the conditions we find ourselves in. It is only by seeing the human AS human, and not merely the puppet of economic forces, that we can begin to free ourselves from exploitation and alienation.
I must admit, as fond as I am of the principles of Sartre's existentialism (i.e. "existence precedes essence," "we are radically free," etc.), his writing can get beyond my own underdeveloped abilities. With that said, what I did understand of Search, if I DID understand it at all, is very illuminating. As I say, it manifests as a critique of Marxism, but it is ultimately one that wishes to put the "Marx," as it were, back INTO Marxism the Marx who, as Sartre writes, did NOT "separate being from Knowledge."
The Marxism of Sartre's day was one of mechanistic certainty; it claimed to understand society through its understanding of class relations. To understand one's class position, it seemed to posit, is to understand how one will behave. A member of the bourgeoisie acted as they did BECAUSE they were a member of the bourgeoisie; they were determined by their class to behave in such a manner.
Sartre, in contrast, wants to remind us that, whatever the class position of a human being, they still *remain* a human being and are, therefore, radically free. True, our class position SITUATES us, but it does not DETERMINE us. We have personal histories, psychologies, and memberships in culture(s) that affect how we view our class position, and how we embrace or reject it. Sartre is not saying that class does not matter at all, far from it, but he merely wishes to show that an overreliance on class analysis hides other explanatory factors, and it can blind us to certain truths about the world. Marxism-as-dogma, "Lazy Marxism," as he calls it, is an insufficient tool to understand our society because it posits in advance what the outcomes of a conflict will be, and, like all dogmas, it rejects any piece of evidence that does not fit a pre-established worldview. This is very dangerous as it destroys our ability to interpret the world, to see the material conditions as they are, and, therefore, weakens our ability to effectively change things for the better.
Sartre wants humanity to get beyond necessity. As a Marxist AND an existentialist, he is commited to a project of human freedom. As long as Marxism reduces every individual to their class, however, it undermines its ability to fully grasp a situation and work to end the alienation we all experience living in a society of exploitation. The goal of existentialism, Sartre says, is to be reabsorbed into a completed Marxism that sees humans as situated, but not determined and that understands that we have the power to surpass the conditions we find ourselves in. It is only by seeing the human AS human, and not merely the puppet of economic forces, that we can begin to free ourselves from exploitation and alienation.
April 24, 2024
Flaubert just like me fr. I am also a bitter narcissistic man who disguises myself as a woman.
JK. Ok, so. Here are some thoughts:
1. I don't like the bad faith equation of "contemporary Marxists" with Marxism. What purpose does it serve? Not to use Sartre's own method against him, but maybe it serves to overinflate the importance of Sartre's own intervention!
2. I don't think his "Marxist existentialism" meaningfully moves beyond Marxism. He seems to go back and forth in agreement with this fact. At the end, he says that existentialism can dissolve within Marxism once Marxism "re-centers the human" or whatever. Not to be like "he's misinterpreting Marxism" but he's misinterpreting Marxism. He's basically equating Marxism with vulgar determinism and then rehashing what dialectics are but on an individual scale. It's a "There is no society, only individuals and families" form of "Marxism."
3. Gramsci and Horkheimer basically already said all the good stuff in here way earlier. Except the part about Flaubert's daddy issues. That was interesting but IMO unnecessary and shouldn't be considered a serious step forward from Marxism. So, Sartre said mostly good things but unfortunately the most original of his ideas were also the worst.
All that being said, vulgar determinism is still a problem for contemporary (2024) Marxists so maybe it would help some of them to psychoanalyze themselves existentially (lol) so they can act a little more agentic instead of fetishizing workers and treating Das Kapital like the Bible.
JK. Ok, so. Here are some thoughts:
1. I don't like the bad faith equation of "contemporary Marxists" with Marxism. What purpose does it serve? Not to use Sartre's own method against him, but maybe it serves to overinflate the importance of Sartre's own intervention!
2. I don't think his "Marxist existentialism" meaningfully moves beyond Marxism. He seems to go back and forth in agreement with this fact. At the end, he says that existentialism can dissolve within Marxism once Marxism "re-centers the human" or whatever. Not to be like "he's misinterpreting Marxism" but he's misinterpreting Marxism. He's basically equating Marxism with vulgar determinism and then rehashing what dialectics are but on an individual scale. It's a "There is no society, only individuals and families" form of "Marxism."
3. Gramsci and Horkheimer basically already said all the good stuff in here way earlier. Except the part about Flaubert's daddy issues. That was interesting but IMO unnecessary and shouldn't be considered a serious step forward from Marxism. So, Sartre said mostly good things but unfortunately the most original of his ideas were also the worst.
All that being said, vulgar determinism is still a problem for contemporary (2024) Marxists so maybe it would help some of them to psychoanalyze themselves existentially (lol) so they can act a little more agentic instead of fetishizing workers and treating Das Kapital like the Bible.
March 22, 2020
I have relatively little experience as a reader of philosophy and confess to have found this a difficult read. Certainly Sartre's work deserves more than the three stars i have given it, but these stars, as I understand it, express more how much we "liked" a book than how much significance we might attach to it. Surely this is an important book in which Sartre is trying to work out a synthesis of two ways of thinking that he finds compelling: Marxism and Existentialism. Essentially he sees the latter as filling in certain gaps he perceives in the rather ideologically rigid former. While he agrees that history on a grand scale might be largely a result of economic, class forces, he argues that this does not account for critical details. That is, one still must account for some particularities, indeed important particularities, beyond simple categories of class. To quote: "Valéry is a petit bourgeois intellectual, no doubt about it. But not every petit bourgeois intellectual is Valéry. The heuristic inadequacy of contemporary Marxism is contained in these two sentences. Marxism lacks any hierarchy of mediations which would permit it to grasp the process which produces the person and his product inside a class and within a given society at a given historical moment" (p56).
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August 20, 2019Fransız Romancı, Gazeteci, Tiyatro Yazarı, Filozof Jean Paul Sartre'ın kitabı, "diyalektik-metafizik metodolojik karşıtlığı"nın "modern" bir Filozof açısından araştırılmasının ve incelenmesinin bir ürünü, bu araştırma ile oluşmuş "filozofik" bir eser! Sartre, "antikçağ metafiziği" ile "antikçağ diyalektiği" çelişkileri üzerine "titizce" düşünmüş bir Filozof, bu açıdan, Descartes'i, Diderot'yu, Hegel'i, Kant'ı, Marx'ı hatırlatmaktan da rahatsız olmuyor, hatta, bu Filozoflardan "yöntembilim" ("metodoloji") alanında çok bilgiler edindiğini de yazıyor. Sartre, "Yöntem Araştırmaları"nda, 20. Yüzyıl'ın "varoluşçu" atmosferinde "modern bir diyalektik metodoloji"nin imkânlarını araştırıyor, "metazifik metodoloji"nin yüzyıllardır ürettiği "metodolojik" düşünceleri de bu araştırmasında kullanıyor, bu açıdan, bir "sentez"e yöneldiği söylenebilir, ama, sonunda varmak istediği ya da vardığı, "modern bir diyalektik metodoloji"yi okurları ile "zihinsel bir işbirliği" içinde tanımlamak!
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October 3, 2019French Philosopher, Novelist, Journalist, Playwriter, Historian Jean Paul Sartre's "Search for a Method" is one of the best books about "methodology" in 20. Century. Sartre writes about the history of philosophy in his book to explain his questions for new methodological searchs in European philosophical tradition. For Sartre, the struggles between "idealist" and "materialist" philosophies and between "metaphysics" and "dialectics" in methodology continue, 20. Century philosophies brought some new concepts and new "searchs" for improving the philosophical questions. Sartre's "Existentialism" is an important movement in 20. Century philosophy, but Sartre says his "existentialism" is not "anti-Marxist", for Sartre, Marxism will be valid in the methodology and for "the social criticism" of "modern capitalism". Sartre's "Existentialism" is a modern contribution to philosophical sciences and Sartre explains the methodological "searchs" of "Existentialism" in his "Search of a Method".
October 31, 2018
worthwhile as an intervention on the undeniably real crisis of marxism, especially its dialectical inheritence (accusing Lukacs of literally not knowing how to read has to be an underrated jab even if i couldn't be fucked to pretend to need to officiate the winner of that feud). but his 'method' on offer in the back half remains largely imprecise and wavering. his existentialism might add something to the most moribund forms of marxism, but its hegelianism is half-assed (but whose isn't?)
August 22, 2022
the argument hes going up against hasnt aged well so reading this in 2022 seems kinda pointless but the intro, the first part and the conclusion were great.
November 30, 2022
A very difficult read due to the frequent references to French historical events and philosophers I have not read.
April 7, 2024
Typical Sartre: beautiful language, enchanting thought, provocative interplay and a considerable tad too long.
May 5, 2019
A thought provoking read on Existential Marxism.
November 29, 2021
A student of philosophy might rate it higher as a strong contribution to the development of ideas. As a general reader, I found it repetitive and full of specialized, often impenetrable, jargon. It's a mystery and a joke that a contemporary review, quoted on the back cover, called the book "eminently readable." The book was essentially an attempt to rescue Marxist thought from irrelevance by insisting that Marxist analysis makes room for the individual human as an autonomous actor. Six decades later, the question is who cares one way or another — certainly not the leaders of the world's largest nominally Communist countries. Sartre kept himself so rigidly within the belief system that he claimed Marx himself believed in a pure form of Marxism that had fallen into disrepair, one that made room for the individual.
Aside from that general argument, there is an interesting statement about halfway through the book: "(L)anguage and culture are not inside the individual like stamps registered by his nervous system. It is the individual who is inside culture and inside language …" However, that is not a perception unique to Sartre.
Aside from that general argument, there is an interesting statement about halfway through the book: "(L)anguage and culture are not inside the individual like stamps registered by his nervous system. It is the individual who is inside culture and inside language …" However, that is not a perception unique to Sartre.
April 21, 2013
One of the reasons I never seriously studied philosophy is because I don’t seem to “get” the philosophers I have read. Often, and especially in the case of existentialism, it appears to me to be the practice of expressing the most obvious ideas using the most obscure possible language. It also always seems to be a series of assertions with minimal evidence (at least in the case of the philosophers I’ve read). Often, the most outrageous and unprovable assertions are delivered at the beginning of a text; thus the entire premises of a philosophical argument appear to me flawed and foolish, and I can’t see any reason to go on.
This book is, if we are to take the introduction by Hazel F. Barnes at its word, an attempt by Sartre to rehabilitate Marxism through an Existentialist prism. That’s probably why I read it once and forgot it. While it attempts to critique Marxism for some of its failures and for over-reaching its potential, it doesn’t really get to the roots of why Marxism is not a path to individual liberation. In places, Sartre seems to have fallen into exactly the kind of reductionism one expects from an orthodox Marxist (which he is not); his analysis of the Marquis de Sade through the perspective of class is extremely limited, for example. Many of the premises he accepts from Marxism appear to me to undermine his argument entirely.
The book has some value, however, in terms of historical significance. One cannot argue that Sartre was one of the most (quite possibly the most) influential philosophers of his age. That he was ultimately unable to think outside of the Marxist box tells us a lot about the generation he influenced, and about the extension of the Cold War into our own time. I also found it interesting that this book includes (page 113) an early example of Max Stirner’s central theme translated as “The Unique,” rather than “the Ego” as it is usually mis-translated into English. Doubtless the translator was unfamiliar with Stirner and simply translated Sartre’s French term literally, so this isn’t a major breakthrough for Stirner studies, but it’s interesting to note.
In general, I guess I’m not equipped to appreciate this book on the level that some others will, and it’s possible that there are better “starter texts” for reading Sartre, but it strikes me that this book is a fairly minor footnote in history, and not much more.
This book is, if we are to take the introduction by Hazel F. Barnes at its word, an attempt by Sartre to rehabilitate Marxism through an Existentialist prism. That’s probably why I read it once and forgot it. While it attempts to critique Marxism for some of its failures and for over-reaching its potential, it doesn’t really get to the roots of why Marxism is not a path to individual liberation. In places, Sartre seems to have fallen into exactly the kind of reductionism one expects from an orthodox Marxist (which he is not); his analysis of the Marquis de Sade through the perspective of class is extremely limited, for example. Many of the premises he accepts from Marxism appear to me to undermine his argument entirely.
The book has some value, however, in terms of historical significance. One cannot argue that Sartre was one of the most (quite possibly the most) influential philosophers of his age. That he was ultimately unable to think outside of the Marxist box tells us a lot about the generation he influenced, and about the extension of the Cold War into our own time. I also found it interesting that this book includes (page 113) an early example of Max Stirner’s central theme translated as “The Unique,” rather than “the Ego” as it is usually mis-translated into English. Doubtless the translator was unfamiliar with Stirner and simply translated Sartre’s French term literally, so this isn’t a major breakthrough for Stirner studies, but it’s interesting to note.
In general, I guess I’m not equipped to appreciate this book on the level that some others will, and it’s possible that there are better “starter texts” for reading Sartre, but it strikes me that this book is a fairly minor footnote in history, and not much more.
April 10, 2016
Sartre spends much time treading, re-treading, and re-re-treading the same critique throughout the text - (then) contemporary Marxism is a deterministic idealism which sullies the work of Karl Marx. It is quite important though, for it seems most people coming to Sartre don't do so in the context of Phenomenology etc but from a more broadly ethical/political context. Though now heavily revised, Sartre's thought on freedom and environment is strongest when situated in this way. His method, and search for it, are likely now a footnote to Marx but hey — the rise of the "intersectional" buzzword in recent years show that these approaches bear rediscovery.
February 15, 2014
My friend and I had a discussion of how Sartre in his later thought began to be pro-socialist and marxist. However, this book seems like a very thorough lambast of marxism and dialetic thought. Sartre criticizes that marxism places imaginary goals as the end of knowledge, which is bad faith in Sartrean theory of consciousness because the individual is the end for Sartre (a la Being and Nothingness).
However, philosophers are notably flippant, but this book seems to condemn marxist and dialetic thinking.
However, philosophers are notably flippant, but this book seems to condemn marxist and dialetic thinking.
March 22, 2016
Although I find it to be somewhat disoriented (Marxist, Humanist, just pre-linguistic turn, politically optimistic, mostly adhesive to capital H history, cosmopolitan, etc; it kind of feels like a mosaic of all philosophy since Hegel), and maybe for the very same reason, I believe this work is crucial to understanding theoretical developments of the 20th century.
June 15, 2023
Upon reread two years after my first foray, I find myself more sympathetic to Sartre than before. Still don't know if I'm sold on the Progressive-Regressive method, but at least he's making an honest attemp
June 10, 2007
sartre's first marxist book, and the only one worth reading, though barely.
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June 15, 2010political social philosophical ideas, far right yet enjoyable.
September 5, 2023
the theoretical equivalent of listening to a harsh noise album - you have to be so deep in the trenches to take anything away from it that maybe its just not worth it
September 6, 2010
More Sartre!
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